


a thief in the night (to come and grab you)

by Aria_Masterson1153



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Demon Gabe, Demonic Possession, Demons, Insecurity, M/M, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 22:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20786399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Masterson1153/pseuds/Aria_Masterson1153
Summary: “You better wake up Tys,” Gabe advises, before his voice deepens, and then deepens impossibly further until the creature’s haunting growl ricochets off each theoretical corner of the endless void.“Before you forget how."





	a thief in the night (to come and grab you)

_You’re perfect for me Tys,_ Gabe would whisper to him. _You’re all I want. _

The reassurance would wash warmth over Tyson’s tense body, vanishing the weight of unfamiliar prying eyes trained directly on them. Or more accurately, their intertwined hands. 

Tyson, modest as he is, prides himself on his ability to read people. And the looks he receives hanging off of Gabe’s arm, as if the strangers couldn’t even place him within Gabe’s proximity? It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the poorly masked contempt layered into their concealed sneers. 

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the way Tyson’s face shuttered at the unwanted attention, either. 

And Gabe, sweet Gabe, always believed he had an answer for it. Like most things, he maintained it could be conquered with his unwavering loyalty and a few—yet no less genuine—words. And truthfully, Tyson could attest to their frequent success rate. 

However; today is not one of those days. 

With the combined dark circles under his eyes and his rumpled clothing, Tyson’s well aware that he’s a sight for sore eyes. Especially standing next to the unfairly attractive man that is somehow his boyfriend, and has been for six months. Because of course Gabe’s vastly superior genes don’t account for the restless night they both had. Don’t exhibit the hours he spent comforting Tyson as he attempted to distinguish reality from his twisted unconscious hours. 

Tyson is having nightmares. 

Not the kind that dissipate once he wakes in a cold sweat, either. Rather, the ones that begin to seep into everyday life; exemplified as he recounts the eerily deep red haze of his nightmares in the burgundy carpet below his feet, shuffling along with averted eyes. He feels suspended again with the weightless void that is saturated with so many of his familiar demons, and some which fleetingly escape his fractured memory.

“Tys,” Gabe murmurs to his left, an anchor for his overtired mind to latch onto. “What’s wrong?” 

Distantly he feels Gabe twine their fingers, offering a short-lived comfort to Tyson's racing mind. Because the longer he stares at the café carpet, the more readily the memories flicker through his mind in abrupt, terrorizing bursts. 

_ A dense, fiery nebula that seemed to gravitate around Tyson as if he were a celestial body himself, orbiting with the latent power of an oncoming hurricane. _

_ A voice, indistinguishable in his disjointed memories, but one he could feel— one that unquestionably established its hierarchy over Tyson’s comparatively meager form. _

_ And a despairing loneliness that Tyson could barely comprehend, had he not directly experienced it himself. _

Shaking himself from his thoughts, he glances up at Gabe, attempting for a smile in the wake of Gabe’s admittedly troubled expression. If anything it increases the overworked crease between his brows, as he considers Tyson like he were some puzzle personally sent for Gabe to solve. The look isn’t anything new, far from it in fact, but there’s a shine in his eyes which gleams unnaturally in the fluorescent light of the café. 

Tyson drops his eyes back to the barely swirling ruby carpet, his default action when Gabe looks nearly inhumanly handsome. Which, as one may guess, is really fucking often. 

“Just, y’know, people,” he responds vaguely, shrugging his shoulders noncommittally. 

“Tys,” Gabe sighs, squeezing his hand gently as he guides them over to their table. “C’mon, I _chose_ you. I don’t know how else to say that you’re all I want— you’re everything I need.” 

Blushing, Tyson sits down across from him and fiddles with his cutlery anxiously. “I know, but I just… I don’t know,” he mumbles with averted eyes. 

“You’re acting weird,” Gabe murmurs in a concerned tone, reaching across to still Tyson’s fidgeting hands. “You’re never this quiet, can you please tell me what’s wrong?” 

Exhaling roughly, Tyson casts a quick look around the café to ensure none of the deceptively nosy patrons are eavesdropping. To his immense relief, most seem more absorbed in their meals than the two of them. 

“I think… the nightmares and lack of sleep are just starting to get to me,” Tyson whispers candidly, the tension returning between his shoulders as he senses the weight of invisible eyes boring into his very being, just as they had in his nightmares. “I’m remembering more of the dreams, and I guess it’s just freaking me out a bit.”

Gabe leans forward suddenly, his eyes bright with interest. “You’re remembering them?” He squeezes Tyson’s hands uncontrollably. As if his memories were a cause for celebration; his nightmares returning to torment him during his previously peaceful waking hours. 

“Yeah, just little flashes here and there,” Tyson enunciates slowly, observing the intrigue bloom within Gabe’s unwavering gaze. 

“Tell me,” Gabe demands in an uncharacteristically cold tone, before deliberately softening his features. “I mean—only if you’re comfortable, of course.” 

“Um, well, I—there’s a lot of red around me, and then...this _voice_,” he shivers as he imagines the vibrations from that horrid voice brushing over the shell of his ear. 

Gabe’s expression remains unchanged, though his eyes fix Tyson with a stare that could shatter diamonds. “Anything else?” 

“It was like… I was trapped, but inside my own head? And no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape… it was horrible,” he reminisces, the mere memory of the inexplicable desolation threatening to swallow him whole. “It was the most desperate you could imagine being— like there was no hope, no one to save me.” 

“I’m here Tys,” Gabe reassures him, soothingly stroking down his clenched fingers. “I’ll _always_ be here.”

That indecipherable glow is still present in Gabe’s expressive eyes, and it’s all Tyson can focus on. Normally he wouldn’t complain, but it’s the attention Gabe’s eyes command, as if he’s compelling Tyson to drown in their depths. In his peripheral vision the other patrons suddenly crumble into the carpet, their wandering eyes shut in complete finality. Yet all he sees is that encompassing blue, glowing brighter and brighter until the irises seem nearly...inhuman. 

He wants to call for Gabe, scream for help, but he’s stuck, an unwilling prisoner to the bottomless depths that seem to be carving a new home for Tyson in the void. 

At once he comprehends the troublesome gleam in Gabe’s eyes. Something he’s seen seldom directed at others, but never himself. 

_Mirth_.

* * *

Tyson’s eyes squeeze painfully shut in response to the overwhelming feeling of being pulled through the eye of a needle. When he cautiously opens them, he’s distantly aware of himself, but more thoroughly taken by the world around him. The viscous burgundy condensate wraps itself around him, suspending him in the utter emptiness that he remembers as the void.

_ Oh no, oh god no. _

His hand passes through the mist that isn’t quite permeable to the naked eye, but apparently enough to defy physics and keep him upright. 

“Hello?” He shouts into the vacuum, his chest concaving when he doesn’t hear the echo of his own voice because there’s nothing to refract his sound off of. “Please, help me!” 

But his voice is lost, just as he is. 

“No one can help you now,” a voice snarls behind him, vibrating as it registers multiple octaves at once. 

It raises the hair on Tyson’s arm and freezes him in his prison; he doesn’t even dare to look back at the creature that is speaking to him.

Because it is a creature, of that much he’s certain. 

“Please,” he begs brokenly, not sure of what he’s pleading for, but knowing he most definitely should be doing it. 

“So weak, so fragile,” the voice tuts disapprovingly, as one would to a misbehaving child

“Please—don’t,” Tyson implores the creature beseechingly, attempting to appeal to a conscience that he’s quite certain does not exist. 

“You’re weak, and you’ll break eventually,” the voice’s growled whisper reverberates inside his skull, as Tyson becomes increasingly ensnared within his waking nightmare. “They _all_ break.”

“Help me, please!” Tyson croaks, his throat too constricted to manage any sort of range on his scream. 

“So it’ll be soon, then,” the voice confirms with a mocking little chuckle that manages to steal even more precious air from the already suffocating void. “They only beg when they already know it’s too late.” 

“Too late?” Tyson repeats in a horrified tone, desperately gulping in the air that is steadily becoming a precious commodity within the smothering film of reddish condensate. 

“I will destroy you,” the voice continues, an undercurrent of buzzing deepening the creature’s tone as if it could not contain its excitement at the prospect. “And it will be the most meaningful act of your meek existence.” 

Tyson never anticipated being confronted with a problem that required the fight or flight response, a situation that he could wholeheartedly regard as being life or death. Glancing around at his bleak surroundings, he realizes that there is nowhere he can hide, that this creature already occupies the darkest corners of his mind. 

Which leaves only one option. Fight. But, he realizes that he’s most certainly outmatched physically. Instead, it’s a battle of the mind, for his sanity. 

“I’m not giving anything to you,” Tyson spits, his voice laced with bravado that fails to resonate with the staccato beating of his heart. 

“_Precious_,” the voice scoffs, and its mocking tone makes Tyson want to curl further into himself in some flimsy method of protection. “That you believe you haven’t already lost.”

He hasn’t lost, Tyson thinks—_wills_ himself to think. He has his family...and he has Gabe. And that’s what does it, what kindles his battling spark. He envisions the way Gabe cradled him into his chest as he sobbed from the devastating aftermath of his nightmares. Remembers the way Gabe soothingly spoke to him, told him how strong he was, and how proud of Tyson he was. 

He’s going to make Gabe proud. He’s going to make himself proud. By literally and figuratively fighting his inner demons. 

Incrementally, he can feel his strength return as he manifests his own happiness, only thinking of Gabe’s small smile only for him, and the way he patiently reassured Tyson that he was his, always. He imagines Gabe’s arms clinging to him like armor, physically shielding Tyson from the voice’s cutting words. 

“I haven’t lost my happiness, which is something you’ll _never_ win,” Tyson emphasizes assuredly. 

“Your happiness was never a bartering tool, never up for debate. Your soul has always belonged to me, and deep down, you know it too. You can feel all the crevices in which I hide, waiting for the perfect,” the voice pauses momentarily, snickering devilishly at his words, “time to strike.” 

The strategic words mercilessly hit their intended mark, undulating in waves that constrict the reserves of oxygen in Tyson’s weakened tissues. They develop and intensify, until he’s laid bare, his soul on display to this _thing_ that would have him no other way. 

“Don’t you know, Tyson?” The sinister voice rumbles before it subsequently lightens, morphing into a hauntingly familiar voice that makes his stomach lurch painfully. “_You’re perfect for me, you’re all I want_—wrapped up in a perfectly gullible mind,” the voice parrots in a cruel, impeccable impersonation of Gabe’s voice. 

Instantaneously, his moment of strength is ruthlessly extinguished as his already weak pulse skyrockets. “Gabe?” Tyson questions frantically, though he intrinsically knows it’s a trick.

“Oh come come, Tyson,” Gabe’s voice scolds, clucking his tongue disdainfully. “I believe we’re far beyond that.”

“Gabe please,” Tyson sobs breathlessly, his hard-earned sanity slipping through his fingers like fine grains of sand. 

His desperate wails roll violently through his body and trick his mind into believing they are echoed, though Tyson is miserably aware nothing will ever reach its way back to him in this achingly barren desert of despair. Feeling very much the broken shell he is, he curls in on himself to weep, as his mind fractures into the jagged pieces the creature has prophesied.

“Begging will accomplish nothing,” the voice states in a nearly bored tone, “I cannot be undermined with _human_ emotions,” the voice spits out the word with palpable disgust. “You will see this through to its expected end.” 

The end. Tyson has never wished for something more fervently. 

“But then, do you even know anymore? What’s real?” The voice teases with juxtaposing wickedness. “I’m guessing it’s becoming harder to tell. Let me simplify it for you; wherever I am, wherever you hear my voice, feel my influence, is real. I’m here—_always_, and I can assure you, I’m not going anywhere.”

He’s powerless to the conquerer in his mind, bending to its every will. The voice is inescapable, an unwelcome reminder that he will never command his mind as he once did. Even when he wakes, he’s not sure he’ll be able to fully escape this time. 

Wait. 

Wake up. 

It’s the only thing Tyson can do now. Wake up. 

Instead of aimlessly pleading to the unyielding voice, he pushes himself in a way he never has before. 

_Wake up Tyson_, he urges weakly, before his inner voice gains strength and his plea instead transforms into an empowered demand. Wake up, Tyson. Wake up. WAKE UP. WAKE UP.

“Yes Tyson,” Gabe’s unnaturally sinister voice encourages him. “You better wake up,” he suggests before his voice deepens, and then deepens impossibly further until the creature’s haunting growl ricochets off each theoretical corner of the endless void. _“Before you forget how.” _

Wake up.

Wake _up_. 

Please, god, please fucking wake up, you can do this Tyson. 

**WAKE UP.**

* * *

Tyson’s eyes are still open as he recoils back into his chair, widened from the trauma of his forceful absence in reality and into the war-field of his mind. His breaths are shallow in their frequent inhalations, and his eyes swim with unshed tears. 

The sight of his boyfriend across the table does much to reassure the tumultuous roiling of his stomach, clenching and knotting with every rushed exhalation. He finds himself within the blue of Gabe’s irises, matte and beautiful. 

“You okay?” Gabe questions in a concerned tone, reaching across the table to wind his warm hands around Tyson’s clammy one. “Lost you for a second, there.” 

Despite the reassurance of his voice, Tyson still cannot find it within himself to verbally respond; instead a small, shaky nod the only response he can force out. Because he was _there_, and he was awake. And he remembers everything—every single terrifying moment. 

His muted response does not go unnoticed by Gabe, who just watches him pensively until Tyson’s skin begins to itch with the need to divert, to distract both himself and Gabe away from his lapse in… well, reality. 

And then Gabe squeezes his hands, a tad too rough to be anywhere near the comfort he craves. 

And when Tyson glances up, it all makes sense. Sickeningly clear sense. 

Because there’s a haze behind the blue of Gabe’s eyes—a beautiful, _dangerous_, red. It’s the red of the forbidden fruit, which lures Tyson as effectively as it destroys him. 

It’s just as potent as the mysterious otherworldly blue, the allure too damning to ignore; his charm working on Tyson as it has worked on countless before him, and will work on countless after him. Tyson sucks in an inaudible gasp, leaning back in his chair in a futile attempt to increase the distance between them as if it’ll protect his already fractured mind. 

_Wake up_, he begs internally, appealing to the last wisps of sanity that he so desperately clings to. He begs mercifully, that he’ll have some sort of reprieve— that a reprieve is even an option. 

Because the _thing_ is right. He doesn’t know what is real anymore. Was Gabe’s smile always this sharp? Did he even meet a Gabe, before the nightmares began? And most importantly, was there even a beginning to this madness? Or is Tyson, like most things these days, fabricating that too?

He knows the other inhabitant of his mind is vindictive, and is savouring the resulting strife of its actions. Is savouring the way Tyson can’t verbally express the suffocating terror that is overtaking his body, waiting for it to hopefully pass without taking him with it. 

Because that smirk never quite dims, instead it sharpens into something wholly more foreboding, exhibiting its overwhelming victory of the battlefield; Tyson’s mind, cratered and trenched from the scars of battle, still worse for wear. 

And then Gabe drops one eye into a sly wink, and it informs Tyson of all he’s dreading to know. That at the end of this battle, there will be no peace treaty signed; no attempt at reconciliation. Only the conquered territory, and the innocence lost in the midst of it. 

Where Tyson’s internal voice is a futile plea, Gabe’s physical voice is sardonic, a derisive lilt which conveys his supremacy more readily than an expression could ever manage. Together, they are two halves of an unwilling whole; complementing each other in a beautiful—horrific, parasitic relationship. 

_ “Wake up.“ _

**Author's Note:**

>   
Me: *Listens to Disturbia by Rihanna approximately 50 times in a row*  
  
Also me: Yo what if Gabe were a demon?????  
  
Cue the birth of this. Hope you enjoyed it!! :D <333333  



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